"Illicit financial flows are a major facilitator of poverty, crime, and corruption in both developed and developing countries," said Raymond Baker, director of Global Financial Integrity, a Washington D.C.-based research and advocacy organization. "Tax haven secrecy drains nearly $1 trillion from developing countries each year. This is money that could have been spent on health care, education, and infrastructure in the world's poorest countries while simultaneously shoring up budget deficits in Europe and the United States. The CUT Loopholes Act would be a tremendous step forward in curtailing these damaging illicit financial flows,”
The groups contend that there is broad support among American voters for closing offshore tax loopholes to deal with budget problems. In a December 2012 national poll conducted by the Mellman Group and commissioned by Friends of the Earth U.S., a 75 percent majority of American voters said they favor closing offshore tax havens as a way of addressing our national budget problems. Support for this proposal was high across party and ideological lines, as well as gender, race, educational background and region.
Respondents were asked: “To help solve our budget problems, do you favor or oppose closing loopholes that allow corporations to declare profits in foreign countries that have a lower tax rate?” Fully three-quarters of voters favored the proposal with nearly two-thirds favoring it strongly.
The FACT coalition has made several reports, resources and survey results available to support its contention that corporate tax breaks are raiding the U.S. Treasury, harming small businesses and developing countries, and are kept in place by campaign contributions and lobbying.
5 Comments
Just more liberal drivel designed to promote and continue class warfare. Any of us with half a brain knows that if you raise taxes on the corporations, they will pass these increases on to us consumers in the form of higher prices. So we end up paying for those tax increases anyway. What's this Einstein's solution to that...forbid corporations to increase their prices?
Posted by: steviegcpa | February 13, 2013 11:48 AM
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Having watched the FATCA fiasco, those saving estimates they pulled out of thin air, I have to laugh when I see this "200 billion over 10 years, according to estimates."
Says who? And at what cost? Show me the methodology that went into this, as I have a very skeptical nose for these types of Government WAGs. Probably some 20 year old staffer working for Carl Levin as an intern came up with them, and now they will be repeated endlessly as gospel.
And.... I absolutely DO NOT believe anything coming out of Citizens for Tax Justice. "Offshore tax abuses cost the U.S. Treasury an estimated $150 billion per year in lost revenues."
and @Gordon, you are absolutely right.
I wonder how much Senator Carl Levin has given his contributing buddies in tax break loopholes in the past and how much that has cost the treasury? We don't like to talk about that, though, do we?
What about those sham shell companies in tax havens on the homeland shores, like Delaware and Wyoming! Guys like Carl are fixated offshore, when the BIGGEST TAX HAVEN IN THE WORLD is right on homeland US shores.
So, if this little beauty passes, how many pages of regulations do you think it will add to the Federal Register? FATCA was 544, but I bet this beats that!
Posted by: Just Me | February 13, 2013 12:06 AM
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As a retired former Manager and sometime Director of the Cayman Islands Chamber of Commerce, it is natural for me to defend our Islands' tax-haven facilities from undue criticism. I write a personal blog (Barlow's Cayman, available via Google) which contains several commentaries on Offshore tax-avoidance. "In defence of Offshore tax havens" (note the British spelling of "defence": we are a British colony, after all!), was posted in August 2012, during the US Presidential election. Readers can check it out in the blogsite archives.
Here is a brief extract. "Americans who resent Offshore tax-havens should ask themselves this: Who is it that composes the IRS code, and leaves the loopholes? The US Congress and its minions, that's who." It seems rather cheeky of Mr Levin and friends to grumble about US tax laws that they themselves must have helped pass into law. Just saying...
Posted by: Gordon Barlow | February 12, 2013 2:57 PM
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As per OldGoat, since SCOTUS declared Corporations to be people, they should now be taxed as people. SCOTUS ruled.
Posted by: tego@verizon.net | February 12, 2013 1:58 PM
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This all sounds good to me, and I also think that all foreign income should be taxed when earned, not when repatriated. After all, it's declared to stockholders as income! As an individual I had to pay income tax on all of my foreign earnings each and every year even though I did not bring any of the funds here for many years. I don't understand why corporations were ever allowed to not pay while individuals are required to do so.
Posted by: OldGoat | February 12, 2013 11:18 AM
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